The Storm Lake Times - Kansashttp://www.stormlake.com/tags/kansas
enWhere will the pipe run?http://www.stormlake.com/articles/2014/07/18/where-will-pipe-run
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">A Texas energy company wants to run an oil pipeline from North Dakota to Illinois with Storm Lake right along the route. So we emailed and called Energy Transfer Partners to determine what the precise route is. Will it go near the lake or the city? Or will it be several miles from town? The company claims it has notified all land owners along the proposed route. But representatives have yet to tell us, at least, where the pipe will go. We do not understand why.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Or maybe we do understand. Maybe the company doesn’t really want anyone to get a firm handle on where the pipeline will run.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">This is not just any pipe. It will be filled with fracked oil from North Dakota called Bakken Crude, which is especially volatile until it is refined. The oil is shipped by rail across Iowa, which is probably more dangerous than shipping it by pipeline.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Eventually the company must satisfy the Iowa Department of Natural Resources that all environmental rules are met. That should be a breeze, since our regulations are so loose. The project also must be approved by the Iowa Utilities Board, which is supposed to be nonpartisan.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">We assume that the state will be able to protect Iowa communities from preventable harm. Our skepticism will remain, however, until the company comes out of the closet and reveals where this pipeline will be sited. It should not be anywhere near the city or the lake. It should be fortified to guarantee that oil could not affect groundwater. If the project is safe, the company should have no hesitation in discussing these important points. We await their response.</span></span></p>
<hr /><p><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong><span style="font-family: georgia, serif;">A Kansas lesson for Iowa</span></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">An experiment in supply-side economics at the rural state level has failed. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and his Republican friends controlling the legislature cut income taxes by n25% and dropped the tax on non-wage income entirely. The result: A 12% drop in state revenue this year, causing tremendous problems for local school districts and a downgrade in its bond ratings from Moody’s.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">This week 100 prominent Republicans, most of them ousted from public service by Tea Partiers in legislative primaries, signed on with their support for Brownback’s Democratic opponent, Paul Davis. The Cook Political Report now rates the gubernatorial race as a “toss-up.” The Kansas City Star reports Davis with a 6-point lead in the latest polling.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Kansas is similar to Iowa: Largely rural with no dominant city, relying on agriculture, meatpacking and manufacturing.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">The main difference is that Democrats control the Senate, keeping Republicans from shooting themselves in the head by accident.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">And, Gov. Terry Branstad is no radical like Brownback. He is conservative when he needs to be. He likes to eviscerate environmental funding, makes sounds about killing public employee unions, and has a penchant for handing money to foreign corporations in the name of economic development. Branstad keeps the base under control with these sleights of hand but has left the tax code alone for several years.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Branstad knows that revenue problems did in former Gov. Chet Culver, once schools started to lay off teachers.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Over the past year, Iowa’s revenue has been stable. All tax streams but for sin taxes (gambling, liquor and tobacco) and real estate transfers increased over the past year, according to the Iowa Department of Revenue.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Iowa’s treasury is solid, its schools are doing well and its economy continues to grow.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Kansas, by contrast, is shrinking in terms of its economy and its public services.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Brownback wanted to compete with the likes of Texas, with no personal income tax. The governor failed to appreciate that Texas has oil and Kansas does not. It also has Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Missouri got Kansas City. Kansas got Wichita.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">No doubt Branstad has been watching. He has had his own intramural battles with the libertarian wing of the party and recently purged them from party leadership. Hence his travels down a much different path than Brownback.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Branstad maintains. Let Iowa chug along. He knows which fights to pick with Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, who probably is smarter than any Democrat in Kansas or Iowa. Kansas tried radical means to achieve income growth and got the opposite. Iowa takes the middle road and is doing quite well. We should aim to keep it that way. The evidence is in.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/ArtSignature.png" style="width: 213px; height: 64px;" /></span></span></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/art-cullen">Art Cullen</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/editorial">Editorial</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/oil-pipeline">Oil pipeline</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/kansas">Kansas</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/terry-branstad">Terry Branstad</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/iowa">Iowa</a></div></div></div>Fri, 18 Jul 2014 14:00:52 +0000clare@stormlake.com4728 at http://www.stormlake.comSpitting into the windhttp://www.stormlake.com/articles/2014/02/05/spitting-wind
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">A growing number of farmers and ranchers in Kansas are trying to block high-voltage electric transmission lines from crossing their land to carry renewable energy from the Midwest to points east. Strange that these same folks vigorously promote the Keystone XL pipeline through the Sandhills of Nebraska, but an electric “pipeline” somehow is wrong.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">They argue against the Clean Line and Grain Belt line (the Clean Line runs through Iowa, the Grain Belt through Kansas). It violates their sense of property rights, of aesthetics and of safety at 600,000 volts overhead. They would prefer to raise cattle in a bucolic pastoral setting that probably never existed. It is hard to imagine Dodge City or Garden City fitting in with Shangri-La.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">First, let’s discount the environmental concerns. These ranchers have depleted the Ogallala Aquifer to the point that they might not be able to water their doggies in 25 years. Without the Ogallala, cattle must give back the land to buffalo, which don’t care a whit about overhead lines.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Kansas’ crop and livestock production is bound to decline with the aquifer. Some would rather cling to a sinking ship than grab a lifeline.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span class="pullquote">Western Kansas is described by some as the Saudi Arabia of windpower. Its wind potential is second only to Texas. Yet Iowa far outpaces Kansas in wind energy production because Kansas is so steeped in the past and fearful of today.</span> (For reference, see “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” William Allen White, Emporia Gazette, 1896. “What’s the matter with Kansas? Nothing under the shining sun. She is losing her wealth, population and standing. She has got her statesmen, and the money power is afraid of her. Kansas is all right. She has started in to raise hell, as Mrs. Lease advised, and she seems to have an over-production. But that doesn’t matter. Kansas never did believe in diversified crops. Kansas is all right. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Kansas. “Every prospect pleases and only man is vile.”</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Let that not be said about Iowa.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">We have the second-highest wind energy output behind Texas. Nearly a third of our state’s electricity is generated by those familiar wind turbines. We could have a lot more of them if we could solve the bottleneck of shipping that windpower to Chicago. Agland owners get royalties for right-of-way. Nobody is stealing their land, as some Kansas claim at public hearings.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Around here, some land is getting stolen because wind generators are not living up to the terms of their contracts. As turbines go dead, as they have near Alta, the property owner does not enjoy the same production royalty. That was the first wind farm in Iowa. It needs to be rebuilt and repowered with turbines that crank out two to three times as much energy. But that complex will not be redeveloped until transmission lines can clear out the backlog. Our wind capacity for Iowa is saturated. We have not even touched urban areas because we cannot get the power there.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">So we hope that the good people of Kansas maintain their 1896 thinking. It will be good for Iowa. This state appears to understand that the wind may be a good cash crop (and new research says we could deploy solar energy fairly well, too). And it will no doubt be good for Texas, where even T. Boone Pickens is a wind-energy acolyte.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">The next generation of Kansas cowpokes might wake up one fine Sunflower morning and realize that the wheat is gone and the cattle are baying. And there won’t even be a wind turbine there to keep them company. The cowpoke of today is blinded by the sunset in his eyes. He would rather stand knee-deep in manure and rail against tomorrow than make something of today.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong><span style="font-family: georgia, serif;">Keep on trying</span></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">On face value the numbers are skewed: Just 7% of Storm Lake’s public school teachers are “minority,” but 80% of the enrollment are children of color. Looking below the surface, we find that Storm Lake has tried to recruit minority teachers (especially Latinos) but it simply is not that easy or productive. So we are growing our own teachers.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">So it is pretty impressive that Storm Lake has been able to produce up to 10 teachers who are of immigrant stock. We also have 31 teacher aides who list themselves as “minority,” from Native American to Hispanic.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">The Public Safety Department is working with the schools to identify local students who might like to pursue a criminal justice degree and eventually diversify the police department.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">When children look up to these success stories, it makes them want to become professionals like their mentors. They will run for public boards and commissions. They will become pastors of our churches. They will be bankers, lawyers and doctors.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Storm Lake is trying, and trying mightily. We just need to keep it up until the numbers roughly match.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/ArtSignature.png" style="width: 213px; height: 64px;" /></span></span></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/editorial">Editorial</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/art-cullen">Art Cullen</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/keystone-xl-pipeline">Keystone XL pipeline</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/kansas">Kansas</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/wind-energy">Wind Energy</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/minorities">Minorities</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/storm-lake">Storm Lake</a></div></div></div>Wed, 05 Feb 2014 15:41:04 +0000clare@stormlake.com2784 at http://www.stormlake.com